- Faculty; On Location
SNHU Instructor Michael Brien’s career has encompassed “a little bit of everything.”
“I’ve done marketing, project management in the electrical industry, coordinated a county-wide welfare-to-work program and even run a janitorial supply business,” Brien notes. Along the way, he’s also seen many of his short stories and articles in print.
Those varied experiences enrich the courses Brien teaches in sociology, English composition and literature through Southern New Hampshire University’s Continuing Education program.
“Teaching permits me to expand the world of students,” he says. “In a composition class, I may present issues I’m having with an editor. For a sociology class, I may use personal experiences of working with individuals with developmental disabilities to launch a discussion about how society treats people with disabilities.”
Brien also invites his students to bring their own perspectives into the classroom.
“One of my sociology students, a drummer, talked about his life as a musician, then tied his experiences into the sociological lessons we were learning," he recalls. "Education is more meaningful when students connect their own lives to the concept presented than when I give them a case to study that may or may not relate. This way, their lives become the text.”
